The surging U.S. women’s curling team ran into a buzzsaw in the unlikely form of winless Italy on Monday in Cortina D’Ampezza.
Chasing the entire series, Team USA found itself down 7-2 after the ninth end and conceded the match, the Americans’ first loss since the opening day of competition.
The loss snapped a three-game win streak and dropped the U.S. to a still strong record of 4-2 in pool play with two matches remaining, starting Tuesday against Denmark at 7:05 a.m. CST.
Host Italy, a power in women’s curling the past several years, was a surprising 0-5 before Monday. Despite playing without the hammer, the Italians built an early 3-0 lead when skip Stefania Constantini knocked the U.S. out of the button and put three stones in scoring position with her last throw.
U.S. skip Tabitha Peterson, whose precise shooting on Sunday helped Team USA rally from down 4-1 to beat China 9-8 in the 10th end, only managed to knock one stone out of position as Italy stole two points.
The Americans — Tabitha and Tara Peterson, Cory Thiesse and Taylor Anderson-Heide — were chasing the rest of the match, never able to cobble together more than one point with their hammer. They didn’t score until Peterson salvaged a point on the last shot of the sixth end to make it 4-1.
Italy didn’t have a hammer until the seventh end, and Constantini used it in the ninth to knock a U.S. stone out of scoring position and snag two more points for a 7-2 lead.
Down five heading into the last end, the U.S. conceded.
“It was definitely a struggle for us out there, me especially,” Thiesse told NBC after the match. “Just kind of had a hard time getting a feel on the ice, and I felt like we were kind of chasing the whole game and couldn’t really get 100 percent out of all of our shots.”
Constantini was part of the Italy mixed doubles team that lost to the U.S. team of Thiesse and Korey Dropkin in the semifinals last week. Team USA went on to win the silver medal, Italy the bronze.
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